Tom Sigurdson, executive director of the B.C. Building Trades, wants more women, First Nations and new Canadians in the building trades. In this 2011 file photo, plumber Ann MacLennan, left, works with apprentice plumber Cathy Minty at Vancouver General Hospital.

Photograph by: Ward Perrin
, Vancouver Sun

VICTORIA -- As a sign that the page has been turned on Election 2013, it would be hard to improve on the optics on display at the premier’s office in downtown Vancouver Monday.

There stood Premier Christy Clark, flanked by two senior labour leaders, whose two organizations had together given $200,000 to the New Democratic Party and not a penny to her B.C. Liberals.

“I’m not a sore winner,” said Clark, who’d invited Jim Sinclair, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour and Tom Sigurdson, executive director of the B.C. Building Trades, to join her. “The campaign is over.”

The occasion was the launching of a joint drive to improve skills training, keyed to Clark’s much-touted promise to develop a liquefied natural gas industry.

Both leaders thanked Clark and pledged to work with government and industry, putting politics behind them for the good of the economy and job creation.

“We’re here today,” acknowledged Sinclair. “That is a statement in and of itself.”

But the significance cut both ways, as the premier had reached out a leader who’d seldom been granted an audience during her predecessor’s time in office, never mind an invitation to participate in a major public policy initiative.

“One of the things that’s startling about this government is that we in the labour movement almost have no relationship to them,” Sinclair told me during an interview last year. “It’s like we don’t exist.”

Still, he was quick to caution against interpreting his presence Monday as a sign that the Fed and the Liberals would not continue to have their disagreements — “I’m sure we will in about five minutes.”

Sigurdson made light of the occasion as well, recalling the custom-made hard hat that Clark wore to many a campaign event. “I’m trying to put a couple of union stickers on there,” he told reporters.

The journey to the public platform with the Liberal leader might have been a little easier for Sigurdson, given his members’ prime interest in jobs in the construction sector and resource development.

Though the building trades supported the New Democrats in the election, once the votes were counted Sigurdson lost little time blasting leader Adrian Dix for his mid-campaign reversal on the proposed twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline.

“To arbitrarily change that, I think that sent a shudder to the investment community and through the labour community,” Sigurdson told reporter Gordon Hoekstra of The Vancouver Sun. “Our members build things. We build British Columbia. And if you have a change in policy, an unexpected change, it’s significant.”

That was May. Four months later, New Democrats are a long way from figuring out how to reconcile their traditional bases of support in private sector labour and resource-dependent communities with the anti-growth sentiment that Dix expressed on Kinder Morgan.

Meanwhile, labour leaders like Sinclair and Sigurdson have to look to the interests of their members, even at the risk of making Clark look good. But each stood to gain from his acceptance of the premier’s invitation, and not just in terms of respect.

The premier promised both leaders they’d be partners in revitalizing skills training alongside government and industry. “Equal partners,” added Sinclair, who has been sharply critical of the Liberal failings in trades training and apprenticeships.

Sigurdson, for his part, is already on record about what needs to happen, starting with a reversal of the Liberals’ decade-long freeze-out of organized labour from the overseer Industry Training Authority.

“When the B.C. government changed the apprenticeship model, it did not want labour participation on the board of the ITA. In the training organizations that operate under the ITA we have only had minimal input — and we have had to fight for that!” he charged in an opinion piece published in The Vancouver Sun on the eve of the election.

He went on to write that change should “begin with a renewed commitment to include the success of having older skilled journey workers mentoring and counselling younger apprentices” and “returning to the compulsory trades requirement which is found in every single province but B.C.

“The success will come about when we include more First Nations, women and new Canadians in our trades. The success will be when we see more registered trainees graduate with meaningful trades certifications that will allow them to journey to the jobs across B.C., to build those mines and pipelines, LNG plants and schools and hospitals.”

As it happens, late last month the Liberals announced a full-blown review of the ITA, overseen by Jessica McDonald, who served as deputy minister to Gordon Campbell during his middle term as premier.

She’s directed to consult broadly with those who have the biggest stakes, organized labour included, with a view to making “recommendations that will strengthen the current system without creating undue disruption to the ongoing recruitment, training and credentialing of the skilled workers that B.C.’s economy needs.”

A reminder there how time’s a-wasting on this file.

Clark deserves credit for including labour leaders in the effort to revitalize skills training in the province. But to make progress, she’ll have to meet them not just on the public platform, but on substance as well.

Tom Sigurdson, executive director of the B.C. Building Trades, wants more women, First Nations and new Canadians in the building trades. In this 2011 file photo, plumber Ann MacLennan, left, works with apprentice plumber Cathy Minty at Vancouver General Hospital.

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